Well if you don't like it you can exercise your democratic right and vote against it... unless you live in one of the many states that do not allow felons to vote.

Nice ain't it?

I understand Samsung's Ultra Power Saver mode also gives you several days on 20% battery power.

Why does your child have to be a scientist? How is this any better than a 20 year old boy whose parents want him to be a doctor and who disown him because he chooses to be a musician?

As a father of seven children, I believe you'll make better parenting decisions if you learn to let go, and spend lots of time deliberating and negotiating with your wife so that the wisdom of both of you can be brought to bear. If you really want your children to be counter culture in some way, and you are both enthusiastic about it, you might look into homeschooling.

My (probably harebrained) idea of the day:

Some folks have long discussed putting more expiration dates on laws. Situations like this show why.

All existing laws lacking expiration dates should be given one. Perhaps 50 years from now, since politicians like to kick the can down the road. New laws without expiration dates should then only be permitted when passed by a supermajority.

Unfortunately, even if this works in theory, it would require a constitutional amendment to have any teeth. Good luck with that.

Actually they would get just enough labor. This has already been tried. It is called the Alaska crab fishery where you make about that much under terrible conditions and they still have a hard time getting a full crew that can handle the demands of the job.

Huh? ESA has insisted that they expect it to wake up again, maybe within the next few days and failing that by 2015.

What it means is that Google has a tendency to assume the set of intelligent people in the world (outside academia perhaps) is a subset of the set of Google employees.

Like others I found the headline confusing. I read it as "Researchers are predicting the use of Wikipedia as a vector for the spread of disease". This may mean that:

• Disinformation and ignorance are diseases.
• Memes and computer viruses are diseases.
• Wilipedia contains information that leads to depression.
• Instructions on Wikipedia lead to substance abuse.
• This is getting entertaining, fill in your own reason here.

I pick forums that have a level of moderation that suits my needs. In the past I tended toward more laissez-faire moderated places and just ignored what I didn't like, but as I've grown older for a handful of subjects I've needed forums that are little tighter. That's the great thing about freedom: you can pick what suits you, and get away from everywhere else.

The problem I see is that if Gnome doesn't defend their trademark, one day Groupon may come around and sue Gnome for their pre-existing non-infringing use of the same name for a different product - and there's a chance they could win. If I understand correctly, going on the record now trying to defend the trademark reduces the possibility that Groupon could win if they were to turn the tables and sue Gnome in a few years.

The politburo was informed in 1979 in a super secret session that the economy could no longer support the arms race and the USSR was broke. Nothing much seems to have come out of it, except that one young Comrade Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was in attendance. Some believe that this was the moment he started planning the changes needed for the USSR to survive.

As to Reagan his true contribution was his willingness to negotiate with the USSR. Thatcher had to point out to Reagan that Gorbachev was a willing negotiating partner. After a hesitating start Reagan got the message and bought full in on the negotiations. This was his contribution, not increase in spending, not the speech in the Berlin Wall, not his deficit increasing tax cuts.

That's one of the best reasons ever for eliminating copyright - let the differing visions compete on their merits, rather than on what is "official" according to the copyright holder.

I loved the Thrawn trilogy, but at some point I realized they could never be movies because they were just too long. Which is a shame - I would sit through them with joy, but the general public wouldn't. Back in the day, everybody I knew thought that the Thrawn trilogy was 7, 8, and 9.

I don't know if today's grown Star Wars fans will ever be happy. Nowadays it's popular to blast even Return of the Jedi. I think the sophisticated fans feel that only IV and V, or even only V, were any good.

My memory is that when TPM came out, everybody on Slashdot posted that they loved it for about a day - and then suddenly the hate came in. I never figured it out. Suddenly it wasn't cool to like TPM, so everybody hated on it.

One of the definitions I found was:

One who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.

I am sure that fits. While SpaceShip II is mainly intended for a non-exploration purpose, the program has resulted in some significant advances in rocketry and White Knight II has significant non-tourism use. These pilots have been involved in other space efforts, I remember the one who was injured from the Rotary Rocket test flights. There are lots of safer ways for these folks to make as much money as a test pilot is paid. They do what they do to advance our progress in aeronautics and space.